Why you should care

Oral Agonies

EUGENE, SIR: My boyfriend really wants to get me off using oral. We have tried this a few times but it was hopeless and by this I mean all wrong and when I tried to give him gentle advice, like going this way or that way, he took offense. So it’s gotten tense and not fun and that’s not at all why I have sex. I have had good oral before but I can’t imagine telling him that and it should be enough that I have the vagina so I actually might know what I am talking about but how do I get this across? I can live without oral and he’s in general good but this seems like a warning sign. — Jenny

Dear Jenny Jenny: Sure you can live without oral but why would you? Because someone doesn’t take advice well? Look, do you ski? You remember when you started skiing? Or playing tennis? Or skateboarding? The key to succeeding at anything is making it through that uncomfortable period of time when you don’t know anything and everyone with eyes, or in this case a vagina, knows. Explain it to him thusly: ”you can be patient and learn with me or forever be cursed with not knowing and dealing with women who absolutely won’t tell you that you suck. In a bad way. Oh, they’ll tell everyone BUT you. Is that what you want?”

Put that way, unless he’s a lunatic, I’m pretty sure that’s precisely what he doesn’t want. Of course, the problem in being the teacher is that it upends whatever your present power dynamic is, which would explain the resentment, but it’s not doing it well that will kill things. It’s the refusal to stop doing it poorly that will kill things. So equilibrium might be reestablished after you’ve both forgotten that you’re the reason he’s gotten good. Or maybe it isn’t and doesn’t? In which case you two grind to a halt? Well, at least you end on an oral sex high note. Which is all anyone can ask for really.

Masturbation Fascination

EUGENE, SIR: Growing up as a teenager I felt like I needed to have sex bad so I masturbated every day, sometimes three times a day and when lady luck was on my side and I got a woman in bed, I was not ready to handle what I asked for because of the masturbating. After that I limited things and found myself more productive and successful in bed. So sexless women should maybe make adjustments and move to another state where there are less women? — Eric Turcios

Dear ET Phone Home: Um, sure. You know, you keep up the cutting and insightful advice giving and you’re going to put me out a job, champ. But glad you made the connection between high-powered masturbatory habits and the increased likelihood that when it comes time to pull the trigger with a partner not your fist that you may have a decreased interest/ability in doing so. It’s all about proper planning. While “taking the edge off” the day before a hot date night might keep you well away from having to write me a letter asking how to last longer in bed, taking too much of an edge off by, say, masturbating three times the day of a hot date night might be a little overkill. Insofar as women moving to where the men are? Well, I had a friend once who did a state by state analysis of single women and where they existed in greatest numbers. The next time I saw him was at a night club in Minneapolis. With two women on his arm. Now I have no idea if he was sleeping with them or if they were paid partners, I just knew he was making the claim that his technique made sense. So yes: going where the goods are makes sense. Or like Confucius may have said, “better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”